I wrote this in April, 2020 for my creative writing class. Enjoy!
I went to college at sixteen. I sat in classes with eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds who had more life experience than I, who knew more than I. I was accosted by voting recruiters stationed around campus and my invariable answer was: “I’m not eighteen yet.” There’s a special kind of magic in being younger than everyone else; it makes you feel like you can conquer the world.
I don’t usually tell people my age straight off. Especially during my first semester, I was really shy about it. Over time I learned to have fun from the shocked looks of awe, from the exclamations of disbelief. It was like I had a joke on everyone: you think I’m at least eighteen—but I’m not.
I am eighteen now, just celebrated my birthday last weekend. Whenever I hit the end of the spring semester, a little of the magic temporarily disappears because I’m “only one year ahead”—but it reappears when I remember that next year, I’ll be a junior at eighteen. It’s become fun to wow people. I’ve gotten over my blushes and confusion when people say: “OH MY GOD. You’re sixteen?!” Well, mostly.
It’s easier when I don’t tell people. I’m still one of them, they don’t treat me any different. I have my own little joke inside, I just walk among them like I’m exactly one of them. When I spill the beans, I receive silence, congratulations, awe, sometimes indifference. But then they see me differently. I’m the little one now, someone to whom they need to be more careful with their jokes, what they say. I’m also apparently a genius, even though the only reason I’m there early is because I skipped a grade in middle school and did two and a half years of high school. Oh, and the fact that I was homeschooled K-12, took the ACT at fifteen and aced it, graduated with my GED two months after I turned sixteen…. does that make me a genius?
When I tell people that I could be in grad school when I’m twenty, their jaws drop, sometimes literally. But for me it’s not really something that’s so special, it’s just a part of who I am. I bloomed a little early in the spring, when the frost was still on the ground. I was just ready before they were. I don’t know if I’m smarter than they are, I don’t know if I will stay two years ahead of everyone all my life. I don’t know if I’m really that different in that way. But it sure is fun to tell a friend you’ve known for a couple of months, someone who’s learned to respect you as a worthy peer, both socially and academically, that you’re two years ahead of everyone else in the room. Believe me, it’s really fun.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t want to sound really braggadocious! Like I said in the last part of the essay, being young in college is just a part of me and I don’t like to brag about it. I wrote this essay to acquaint you with an interesting part of my life, something uncommon, something that’s different about me.
The Alchemy of Art 